Nice Idea, Won't Work Here
Don’t worry about the person who told you it couldn’t be done.
There’s a LinkedIn cliché which comes up most weeks in my feed, where someone needs to share a long story about the adversity they overcame when getting started, and it usually involves being told by someone of influence that they could never do what they dreamed of.
This seems to trigger a “how dare they, I’ll show them” mindset. And then a couple of years later, when the goal has been hit they finally get their moment of being able to press send on that LinkedIn gloat post, and they get this amazing rush of satisfaction.
Or not.
It is quite a romantic idea, but it’s really not a great reason to get out of bed every morning.
Maybe I’m biased because I listen to a lot of Alan Partridge audiobooks and it always makes me read the posts with his voice in mind, and add “needless to say, I had the last laugh” at the end.
Intrinsic Motivation
There’s something in here around where the intrinsic and extrinsic meet, and how that dose of “I’ll prove you wrong” energy can get the intrinsic pumping a little bit more.
You don’t think about that person or comment every day, in every sales process or every hire, but there’s obviously something rumbling away under the surface.
I’ve written before about the need to have the deeper intrinsic motivation to get you through the roughest days, nights, weeks, months, and years of starting and scaling something from scratch. It’s the stuff about falling in love with the problem not the solution, and not just doing it for the money.
Maybe for some people it’s a case of overcoming adversity that keeps them going on the worst days.
I think this is especially true for those who feel like their name is the most valuable thing they have, but this would need a longer piece to explain my thinking fully.
Getting Good Advice
Some people feel it is their duty to tell you that your idea is rubbish, to save wasting your time.
I’ve written about this before.
I’m not sure if they think it’s a moral duty, or what, but it’s often a bit misguided and filled with some kind of superiority complex.
There were a lot of meetings that I had when we were first setting up ICE that had this tone. I remember one specifically which was very well-meaning but ended with a “nice idea, won’t work here” which I always recite but which really wasn’t that much of a motivator.
If anything it just acts as more of a reminder of how hard of a challenge you’re taking on.
In those early days, you’re looking for someone to tell you something positive for a stack of reasons.
When you’re trying to drive a new idea, you want validation, you might want people to tell you how wonderful you are.
You know it is hard, but you’re not afraid of hard work. Unless you’ve done it before you also probably don’t know just how hard it’s going to be, so it’s unlikely that the “it’s going to be hard work” advice will land without sounding like your commitment and effort is being challenged.
You want to feel welcomed in this new community and know you’ve found the right place.
So it’s perfectly normal and natural that those people telling you that it can’t be done will leave a mark.
But there’s a big dollop of Mom Test in this.
You need to decide whose advice you take on board and who you politely smile back at and move on from.
There’s no value acting on feedback from someone who is not going to be a customer or key stakeholder. There’s no point asking me if your energy drink business or film idea is going to be a hit.
Taking the wrong advice and feedback seriously can lead to a great sense of facing more adversity than the reality.
On the Face of Adversity
Adversity is the last bit of this I would like to explore more.
A big part of the LinkedIn post is this perspective on having overcome adversity.
It’s the same with Britain’s Got Talent.
There’s something in the empathy created when witnessing a human do something superhuman and overcoming unbelievable barriers.
We are really attracted to this story, the hero’s journey. Crossing the threshold into the unknown, facing your fears and living to return to tell the story - sharing the gift.
Knowing how much the hero’s journey resonates has led to successfully replicated films and TV show formats.
Without the adversity, it’s just someone doing something. The adversity introduces this sense of doubt that they could possibly achieve their goals given everything they had to face and overcome.
Adversity is an interesting thing to explore.
Our instinct would be that you really want to avoid adversity, but even beyond creating a compelling background for your future TED Talk and appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, adversity can be strangely good for you - sometimes.
Written All Over Your Face
In Sikh culture, there is a belief that at birth you have the destiny of your soul written on your forehead. It is where your soul resides, not technically “written” but told.
There’s a thought experiment linked to this, if you could read the destiny of your newborn daughter and see that she had a catastrophic accident in her late teens - say a car crash in which a close friend dies and she loses a leg - would your instinct be to protect her and avoid this destiny, or let it happen?
Of course, instinctively it would be to protect her and have her avoid the pain, but these episodes of adversity can be the making of us.
This is not to say it is wise to create catastrophic events, but it is how you react to these events that is crucial.
Not wearing a helmet on a motorbike isn’t inviting an opportunity to create an interesting backstory.
There’s an extreme to this, and that’s the recognition that adverse childhood experiences - ACEs - contribute to a lot of bad outcomes later in life, from social integration, economic engagement, or even health conditions and inflammation.
There’s a very thin line between adversity being good or bad for your long term prospects, and even then it isn’t binary.
It seems from research that the best time for adversity is in young adulthood, old enough to comprehend and process what’s going on, and young enough to build a new path and respond to it.
But that probably feels like quite a crass comment if you’ve faced serious adversity in your life that affects your day to day living, so I hope this brief section on such a deep and complicated topic doesn’t come across as dismissive or insensitive.
Hindsight
One of the people who told me it wouldn’t work has since held their hands up and accepted that it wasn’t their finest prediction.
I don’t resent their feedback - they were probably right. There was no convincing evidence that we would make it work.
That’s the point, I suppose. Overcoming the adversity to have a story to tell. Not having the experience, skills, means, or resources for anyone to believe you could do it, which leads to quite a reasonable assumption that you will fail.
Of course, alternatively do what ever you like.
If you’re getting what you want and what you need I’m sure a random post from the guy sat in this seat isn’t really going to change your course.
It would be pretty hypocritical if that wasn’t the case at the end of a post like this.
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